Elaine Nekritz (born December 11, 1957) is an American attorney and politician. She served as a Democratic member of the

Illinois House of Representatives The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The House under the current constitution as amended in 1980 consists of 118 re ...

, representing the 57th District from 2001 to 2017. She was formerly the Democratic Committeeman of

Northfield Township, Illinois Northfield Township is one of 29 townships in Cook County, Illinois, USA. As of the 2010 census, its population was 85,102. The township office is located at 2550 Waukegan Road (just south of Willow Road) in Glenview. The township was establishe ...

. Prior to her election as representative of the 57th district, Nekritz was a member of the law firm of Altheimer and Gray, working as a real estate attorney and later becoming a partner with the firm. She also worked as legislative aide to

Jeffrey Schoenberg Jeffrey Schoenberg is an American politician. He is a former Democratic member of the Illinois Senate, representing the 9th district from 2003 to 2013. He earlier served for six terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, first elected t ...

, now the state senator for the 9th District, while he served as the state representative of the 58th District. Nekritz was born and raised in

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had ...

. She currently resides in

Northbrook, Illinois Northbrook is a suburb of Chicago, located at the northern edge of Cook County, Illinois, United States, on the border of Lake County, Illinois, Lake County. Per the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 35,222. When incorpo ...

, with her husband, Barry.

Issues

Representative Nekritz co-sponsored SB-1; a plan that amended state employee pension plans by drastically reducing the constitutionally protected benefits of Illinois state employees in retirement. The Illinois Supreme Court ultimately found these legislative changes to be unconstitutional. As the Illinois Supreme Court ruling stated: "These modifications to pension benefits unquestionably diminish the value of the retirement annuities the members…were promised when they joined the pension system. Accordingly, based on the plain language of the Act, these annuity-reducing provisions contravene the pension protection clause's absolute prohibition against diminishment of pension benefits and exceed the General Assembly's authority."

High-speed rail

Nekritz is the Chair of the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission and advocates building numerous high-speed rail lines in Illinois, including one from Chicago to Detroit
See written testimony before the Rail Subcommittee of the U.S. House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee April 20, 2010 (pdf)

Retirement Announced

On June 16, 2017, Nekritz announced that she will not be seeking re-election to her position. On October 3, 2017, Nekritz was replaced by

Jonathan Carroll Jonathan Samuel Carroll (born January 26, 1949) is an American fiction writer primarily known for novels that may be labelled magic realism, slipstream or contemporary fantasy. He has lived in Austria since 1974. Life and work Carroll was b ...

References

External links

Representative Elaine Nekritz (D) 57th District
Illinois General Assembly **By session
98th97th96th95th94th93rdState Representative Elaine Nekritz
constituency site *
Rep. Elaine Nekritz
at Illinois House Democrats
2012 candidate questionnaire
at the ''

Daily Herald (Arlington Heights) The ''Daily Herald'' is a daily newspaper based in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The newspaper is distributed in the northern, northwestern and western suburbs of Chicago. It is the namesake of the Daily Herald Media Group, a ...

'' Democratic Party members of the Illinois House of Representatives Jewish American state legislators in Illinois 1957 births Living people Women state legislators in Illinois University of Michigan Law School alumni 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women {{Illinois-Ilrepresentative-stub